T-Model Ford

He had been known simply as James Lewis Carter Ford for the first seventy seven or so years of his life-his exact year of birth has long ago vanished from the banks of his memory. Seventy something years of plowing fields, driving trucks, and literally working on a chain gang, as murder convictions tend to yield. Sunday mornings spent in county lock up more than in church. By all accounts, it was seventy odd years of debauchery and sub blue collared angst. As the man now known as “Taildigger” recalls, in his ever so eloquent draw, “I could really stomp some ass back then. I was a sure enough dangerous man”. True artists seem to find themselves when ready, even if it takes three quarters of a century. Witness T-Model Ford.

Few, if any, musicians wander into their golden years at a peak, with most leaving their relevance within the mental archives of the generation they served. No one has dipped a toe into the uncharted waters that James “T-Model” Ford has taken a swan dive into. The juke joint/electric/Delta/rock blues maestro from Mississippi BEGAN his career in his seventies, and is still laying it down at the ripe old age of 90(ish). Hardened and war torn, it is no shock that Ford is a blues man. It is one thing to play a riff or jot down some broken- soul lyrics; it is another to be a living prototype of a genre in its entirety. Simply, Ford has lived and breathed the blues. Ford IS the blues. Gruff, tough and gritty, T-Model has consistently recorded his life’s soundtrack with Fat Possum Records since 1997, raising a middle finger to the forces that have tried in vain to thwart him, including a pacemaker and a stroke induced limited mobility on his right side. Oh, and Johnny Law.

After a summer on the road with his backing band, GravelRoad, the oldest freshman to ever turn a six string into magic is set to release an album in 2011. A lifetime of trials and tribulations has culminated into one extraordinary finale, although with Ford, who’s to say it’s nearing the end? Time is relative, and no amount of time could possibly soften who T- Model Ford truly is. Simply ask any studio musician who has crossed paths with the surly man- child and his unforgiving confidence. As the legend goes, he greets each well meaning artist with the same heartfelt declaration, again with his own tainted grammar and highly effective directness: “T-Model Ford is going to remember you sorry (expletive) how it’s done”. To be 90 and leave able bodied twentysomethings quivering in their trendy shoes. Benjamin Button, eat your heart out.